Chris Hodges - Relational Healing
All right, how's everybody doing today? Everybody doing good? Who's glad to be in church today? Anybody, anybody? It's good to see you guys and welcome to week number 2 of a series that we're in called, "I've Witnessed It". I'll tell you more about that in just a second, but let me look straight into the camera as I always like to do, to begin, and just say hello to all of our campuses across Alabama and Georgia. Wanna say hello to the men and women in the Alabama Department of Corrections. We're so grateful, very honored, to be a part of your life and you be a part of our church family.
To those that are watching online or on demand, we're so glad you're along for the ride as well. But I wanna give a special shout out today to 208 brand-new incoming freshmen to Highlands College. Come on, show your love to them, everybody. Oh, you can do a little bit better than that. I said 208. So yeah, this is exciting. In fact, on Friday night, I spoke to all of these incoming freshmen at our family night and it's just so delighted. Some of the families are still here. We're so glad. Turn them loose now. Turn them loose. You've got to go back home, all right, so. But we are very, very honored that all of you guys have joined us today for the continuation of this series.
Before we jump in, there's a lot happening in church life right now. You know about this, but I'm gonna add a few details that you might not know. We are in day number 8 of 21 Days of Prayer. If that's new to you, our church was actually founded on prayer. We started that at the beginning of 2001 before we even had our first service. And we've been praying twice a year, 21 days. That means showing up at 6 o'clock every morning, Monday through Friday, then 9 o'clock on Saturdays. We've had a 22% increase in your participation even from last year, same time. Way to go, Highlands. I'm so proud of you. And because we're desperate for God. Can I hear a good "Amen," everybody?
And if we've ever needed the Lord in our nation, it's now. And so we're praying for revival, praying for people to know the Lord, and we wanna encourage you guys to participate with us. Starting tonight, we're having Revival Nights. I'll tell you more about that in a second. But because of that, and because of our team staying up very, very late, and then they have to get here an hour ahead of all of us or more to do sound checks, turn on lights. For the next 3 mornings, we're not gonna have prayer in person, but we are gonna have prayer online. In fact, I'm leading prayer tomorrow morning at 6 a.m., but it'll be an online only experience.
And so I encourage you just to grab a tablet or a screen somewhere and just participate in prayer with us and that'll give our teams a little rest so while we're getting revived we don't get revived to a rag. Amen, everybody, all right? So, make sure you know that. Well, we're joined back on Thursday morning, though, in person like usual, all the way through the end. Tonight does begin several nights of what we call Revival Nights. Last year was the first time we'd ever done that and it was so widely popular. We had packed-out auditoriums every single night and, honestly, God moved in a great way as we just really say, "God, we just need more of you". And so we have a little bit longer worship. We're inviting guest speakers throughout this time. Starts tonight at 6:30, at every location. I encourage you to come early.
Again, it was... they had all filled up last year. We have services tonight, Monday night, and Tuesday night for all of us. And then on Wednesday night, it's gonna be students only. And then on Thursday night, it's men only. And so we've... in that, guys, I want you to join me on Thursday night. Pastor Craig Groeschel will be here, who actually pastors the largest church in our country, and he's gonna speak to us, and we're gonna have food as well. So men, we do need you to register. Our teams will place orders for all these chicken wings. Can I get a better "Amen" for chicken wings right there? So to make sure we have enough food and not too much because we don't want to be wasteful, but we also don't want anyone not fed.
So men, if you'd please register. It's free, but just let us know so we know how much food to order. One more detail about Revival Nights. These are in-person only. We are not streaming these services for a variety of reasons, so this will not be online. You have to be here to be a part of it. All right, we are in week number 2 of "I've Witnessed It". And I'll tell you why we've named this series "I've Witnessed It" in just a moment. But the heart behind it is simple, and that is that we believe that God does miracles. So we also believe that there's a role of what we do, like we're faithful in church, we get involved, there's things that we do that get God's work happening in our life.
In fact, we just had a long series called "Disciple" where we just talked about our role in building our faith. But we also recognize that it's not all up to us, that God still does miracles. In fact, a lot of us are facing things that all the work that we do still couldn't fix it. I'm talking about our marriage or our finances or our health. We have areas where we have to have a miracle from heaven. Now there are some traditions who don't believe that God still does miracles. We are not one of those. We do not believe the great physician has closed shop. In fact, we believe God is still doing miracles. And if you believe it, give the miracle-worker the best hand clap of praise you have. Right, okay. I'm so happy to hear I'm in the right room, okay?
But Psalm chapter 77 says, "What god is as great as our God"? And there isn't one, by the way. "You are the God who performs miracles; you display your power among the people". So notice, we believe God is doing a work that is beyond what man can do and we're trusting that for you. So we're actually making room at the end of every service to actually have a prayer time to believe God for miracles in your life. And my job is to build your faith and to teach you a little bit so when we get there you're ready to go, all right? But I also want to show you that Jesus's life was marked by this. In fact, what I like about this verse is it shows what a balanced ministry Jesus had.
In my opinion, churches should actually mirror the ministry of Jesus. Because Jesus went through the towns and villages and he did three things. He taught in the synagogues, he preached the good news of the kingdom, and he healed every disease and sickness. I would like to think that really healthy ministry has all three. Teaching in the synagogues, that's really like, that's discipleship, learning our Bibles, growing closer to God. Preaching the good news means we're also going to bring this message not just to Christians, but to those that are far from God. And that's why a lot of what we do as a church is for you, but there's a lot of what we do that's for those that are on the outside, those who are far from God, and that's why we make room in our services, and a lot of that's coming up this fall.
We have weekends that are really dedicated. You bring your friends. We're gonna see thousands of people give their life to Jesus in this season. But notice the last one, and this is the one that this series is all about, and that is healing, that God's doing a healing of every place where you are dis-eased. And a lot of us are dis-eased in our finances, or our bodies, or our marriages, or relationships, our emotions. We're gonna talk about emotional healing in the final installment of this. And we really believe that it's important for us at Highlands to have all three of these. So this month, as we're focusing on healing, here's our thought, and that is, what would it look like if we add the component that all healing requires, and that's faith. And faith's one of those, it feels like slippery things, right? How do I get my hands around it? What is it? If I don't have enough, how do I get more?
People, I think, ask this question all the time. And the truth be known, I believe, is that faith can be built. And so, only thing I really knew how to do as a leader, as a pastor, was just create faith-filled environments and ask you to show up to as many of them as you can. And so, we're in this season of 21 Days of Prayer. We're having services, of course, every Sunday. We're starting Small Groups, so there's a lot of training going on with potential leaders that are coming up. We have many of you getting on the growth track for the first time. We're in Revival Nights and here's my promise to you. I make this promise a lot that if you'll give us a year of your life, God will change your life. I'm telling you, if you'll just go all in. But I'm gonna even make it even simpler than that.
If you gave God a month of your life, if you really just stepped into the life of the local church, into what God wants to do inside of your life, here's what I believe is gonna happen: is your faith is gonna be built and miracles gonna happen among us even this month in Jesus's name. Do you believe that, everybody? I really do. All right, but there's one more component to faith building and it goes beyond church services and prayer and all that and that's stories. Stories have a way of building our faith because if it happened to them, I mean, they're just normal folks just like me and if it happened to them, could it happen for me? And the answer is a resounding Yes and that's where... we're in this series called "I've Witnessed It". We're telling you stories of miracles.
John wrote about this in 1 John chapter 1. He says, "That which was from the beginning," and he's talking about Jesus, "which we have heard," and all of you have heard about Jesus, but he says, "but look, I was there. I saw him with my own eyes. I have looked at his hands and have touched him, and I proclaim this Word of life that I saw, touched, felt. I experienced it myself. I witnessed it. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard," so that when you hear our story of the people who had the first, I mean the front row seat to this miracle, you could jump into the fellowship of that and be a part of it and that's our hope.
So I want to begin right here, telling you what our topic is today, and just giving you a few stories apologize for my voice. I am way more excited than my voice sounds. I've just been preaching a lot lately. I led prayer yesterday. I prayed way too loud, but it was fun. But anyway, here we go, all right, everybody? We're talking about the healing of relationships. So, by the way, before I even read the ones that the team gave me, just the stories that people have been reporting to us, I've witnessed it.
In fact, just a couple years ago, we had a lady who visited our church for the first time, And she came back the next Sunday and told me this story. She goes, "Last Sunday was my first Sunday, and while I was attending Highlands for the first time, my husband was at home packing his bags. Our marriage was over". She goes, "After I experienced the service, and more importantly, experienced God, I went back home and I said, 'Honey, would you please just give our marriage one more week and come to church with me next Sunday?'" He agreed to unpack his bags for 1 week, came to church the next Sunday. Both of them got saved and their marriage is healed and they're still... come on, everybody. Why don't you thank God like it was your marriage or your family, right?
That's just one of many stories that I could tell, but this one comes from Michael and Angela in our Tuscaloosa campus. Angela and Michael both grew up in church but they were not prioritizing their marriage or their relationship with God, like a lot of people do. Ten years into their marriage and three kids later, they found themselves on the brink of divorce. Then they were invited to Church of the Highlands. God slowly softened their hearts. And I want you to hear some of the details of this story and the stories I'm gonna tell you because there's teaching actually in the details of the stories and I don't want you to miss it. But notice that God slowly worked on their hearts before they got their miracle. God worked on their hearts and began to move in their lives. Then they took the step to go all in.
Again, marriage still not totally healed, but they decided to take the challenge and go all in with God and their lives turned around. Angela attended the Freedom Conference. They both attended the Marriage Conference together for the first time, and then they attended a marriage Small Group this semester. Again, marriage not put back together, just taking the steps and deciding to put it to the test, to see if God would do something great in their life, and it completely changed their lives, brought them closer together, healed their marriage, and Angela said, "Our relationship that should have ended in divorce is now thriving. God did a miracle".
Come on, praise God together, everybody. Again, why don't you thank God like it's your brother or your sister or your child? So this is one more I want to read you. This is a great one. This comes from Tracy who is at our Madison campus. Desperate for change and hope, Tracy signed up for a freedom Small Group. He was stuck in a rut with life and needed to do something different. So during the Forgiveness Week of the Freedom curriculum that we have, God laid his brother on his heart, of which they have been estranged from each other for 10 years. After surrendering his unforgiveness to God, he started to do a work in Tracy's life, and he began to pray for his brother, the brother that he had had issues and conflict with. And this semester, over a year and a half later, he decided to lead a freedom group.
Again, I want you to note that God started working at his heart when he attended a group, and then he decided, I'm gonna ramp this up. I know my relationships are broken, but I'm gonna go try to heal somebody else's. And he led a freedom group, and the forgiveness chapter came full circle. While he was leading the freedom group, his brother contacted him out of the clear blue after 10 years and wanted to meet. It was a miracle from God and full restoration and healing happened for them both. God answered my years, not days, not service, years of praying for him, and now my brother is attending Church of the Highlands, and Tracy says to the church, he wants me to tell you this, "Never give up praying. God can make the impossible possible".
One more time, everybody. So today I want to talk to you about the anatomy or the process of what takes place when we allow God to bring a healing in really, I think, one of the most painful areas of our life. You know, there's nothing like really being sick, but honestly, I think something worse than being sick is when you're sick in your heart from a relational issue. I have parents who tell me all the time, I believe this with all my heart, if you ever have kids, you understand this, and that is, you're only as happy as your saddest child. You're only happy as your relationships are because relationships have so much power in our lives, and I wanna talk to you about how God can heal and restore.
And again, I'm gonna believe God. I want you to look in my eyes and hear this, we're gonna pray today for marriages to be healed and for our families to be put back together. And if we have children who are away from God or away from home, we're gonna pray they're coming back home in Jesus's name and I've witnessed it. I've seen it over and over and over again. I mean, another story just comes to mind. Years ago, it was really in the second year of the church. We were in 21 Days of Prayer and this lady walked up to me and she said, "Pastor Chris, would you agree with me for my marriage"? I said, "Well sure, tell me what's going on". She said, "My husband left me with his secretary and they're living together and they've been living together for a couple of years now".
And I said, "Okay, well, let's just pray and just seek the Lord and we're gonna", I said, "What do you want God to do"? She goes, "I want my marriage back. I want my husband healed. I want my marriage back". I said, "All right". So I decided I was gonna agree with her. About day 16, 17, it was later in the 21 days, she met me right before the prayer service began. She goes, "My husband," this was on a Saturday. She goes, "My husband called me on the way to the prayer service today and he told me this story". He says he sat up in bed. Now, Saturday morning, and his mistress is laying right there next to him. He sat up in bed and he goes, "Oh my God, I'm in bed with somebody other than my wife".
Jumped out like it all came to him, jumped out of bed, went and packed his things and went and checked into a hotel and called his wife and told him what happened. She goes, "Pastor Chris, God's working in his life. What should I do"? I said, "We ain't letting him home yet. I'm going to tell you that right now, okay? That brother's going to have to work for it a little bit, right? I mean, praise God for that revelation, but there's a little work to do". I'm just saying, okay? Thank God she had a pastor, isn't that right, everybody? So we took him through about a year's counseling and they got remarried and they're married. It's been 20 years and that couple is still together in Jesus's name.
Now you can thank God for that. Okay, here's the tricky one with this particular miracle. And that is even if you're not the person involved, you're just concerned about someone else. Maybe it's your child who's actually having issues or there's something broken relationally, here's the problem with this one. There is no other area that gets in our hearts and can affect us in ways beyond the very thing itself than like relationships. It's crazy how much power relational wounds and relational issues affect us. It's affecting your sleep, it's affecting the quality of your life. And I need to teach you something about that so you can know where I'm going because what I'm gonna teach you absolutely works.
But I wanna set the stage by showing you a very interesting story that few people have ever even heard taught in church before. It's a story that happens in Genesis chapter 11, and it's the account of a guy named Terah. Chances are you've never heard of this guy named Terah, but Terah is the father of Abraham. His name was Abram at this point, and Terah had three boys: Abraham or Abram, Nahor, and Haran. Let me time out right here and say it's chapter 12 where you get the call of Abraham to go basically start the Jewish nation or the nation of Israel and he becomes the father of the nation of Israel. It's the story everybody does know about. But in this story it says, Terah is the father of these three boys and Haran became the father of Lot.
That's just a side note because Lot's a story that's gonna be told later in the book of Genesis. But watch this very interesting detail. While his father Terah was still alive, the baby in the family, the third son, the youngest son, dies. So we know it's premature because Terah is still alive. So either by sickness or by accident, the baby in the family is gone. And anybody who's ever experienced that, I don't know that there are few things that are more painful than the loss of a child who dies prematurely like that. "He died in Ur of the Chaldeans," that's an interesting and important detail, "in the land of their birth. Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot, son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out from where they lived," which was a place called Ur of the Chaldeans, "to go to Canaan".
Canaan is the Promised Land. Canaan is the nation of Israel today. So the only thing that's missing in this story for me to make this thought happen that may not be true, let me just be very frank with you, I'm gonna make a suggestion to you that the Bible's not saying, but I think you're gonna agree with me when you see it. The only thing that's missing is that God told him to do it. So if it would have said, God said, "Hey, I need you to leave Ur, and I need you to go to Canaan," that would help. Because I personally believe, and you don't have to accept this, this is just something I personally believe, that the original call of God wasn't on Abraham. I think it was on his daddy. I think God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
It could have been, this is just my suggestion. It could have been Terah, Abraham, and Isaac. Because we see this call. He just wakes up one day, "Hey, we're gonna leave Ur, we're gonna go to Canaan", what ends up being the Promised Land. But then this next sentence is very interesting. It says, "But when they came to Haran," they don't go to Canaan, "they settled there". So here's Ur, and here's Canaan, and there's a city between the two cities and it just so happens to have the same name as the dead baby boy. And when he gets there and has to go through his pain, he never gets to his promise. We know where he wants to go. He wants to go to Canaan, but he gets stuck in the place where he's now remembering once again how painful it was to lose his son Haran in a city that just so happens to have the same name.
And I wonder how many people get to that place and never get to the promises of God because they never deal with their relational issues that we have to work through, but we also need a miracle from God. And then you get the next... it's a sad sentence. The next verse in the text says this: Terah lives 205 years and dies, never going to Canaan. He dies in the place of the thing that was the most painful part of his relationship life. I would submit to you that was Lauren's story. Lauren was in the middle that you saw in the video. She was in the middle of Haran. She knew what to do. She knew God would help her, but she got stuck there. And she realized, I'm so mad at my dad for being addicted and for the way he treated us, and she ran from God all along, and she's really in her Haran.
By the way, the rest of that story is, it was her dad who gave his life to Jesus, started praying for his daughter, asking God to restore that relationship, and her dad and the family came back to church. She gives her life to Jesus. And by the way, her dad, Billy, is on our team up in Madison today. Can we thank God for that, everybody, right? Miracle on top of miracle. So when we think about all these stories that we're telling you, and then we talk about even these stories that are in the Bible, then how does God heal us, give us a miracle in the area of our relationships? I'm gonna offer three thoughts to you that I'm encouraging you to have, and I have to encourage you, because it takes courage to do what I'm saying, because it's painful, right?
There's three things I'm gonna encourage you to do to get a relationship miracle. And the first is to allow God to do a work inside of you first. And I wanna say this to you, and you've gotta receive it, and you can't resent God for this thought, you just have to receive this, okay? Oftentimes before God wants to heal your marriage and heal your kids, he wants to do the work inside of you first. And that's why he calls us, I believe, to activate the work of God by the choices we make toward those painful moments. So that's why there's so much in the text about forgiveness. And you think, "Well, I'm not the one that needs to forgive them. They need to be calling me. They're the ones who did it".
But God says if you'll go ahead and take the lead in that, in your heart, listen to me church, I've seen it. I've watched 41 years of ministry of people who they were the ones who were offended, they didn't do anything, but they took the step to say, "I'm gonna forgive you first," and it unlocks something in the heavenlies for that relationship to be healed. Now, Jesus taught us this. Of course, in the famous Lord's Prayer, "Forgive us our debts as we forgive those who have trespassed against us," Jesus taught forgiveness strongly. In fact, in the Lord's Prayer, it's the only part of the Lord's Prayer that after the Lord's Prayer, Jesus gave more commentary to. So he gave us the prayer and he goes, "Hey, let's go back to that forgiveness thing again".
And the Lord's Prayer is found in Matthew chapter 6, so when the prayer ends, "Thine be the glory, the power forever, amen," hey, let's talk about this again. This is the next verse. "For if you forgive other people when they sin against you," notice you're taking the lead, not them. Your heavenly Father gets involved, he forgives you. But if you do not, it's like it locks something in the heavenlies. And I just want you to see that. I want you to see that we have a role first to say, "God, I need a miracle in my marriage. I need... he left me". But it was this lady who said, "I'm gonna believe God for my husband," when he was the one who was the offender. Are y'all following me, everybody?
This is very important and it does something in the miraculous that I want you just to hear. And it does take great courage, it takes great faith. The truth be known, God has forgiven us of so much. And he's done so much for us. I forgive, not just because they deserve it, I forgive because he first forgave me, everybody. To whom much is given, you know, we just, we desire to extend that to other people even if they honestly, even if they really don't deserve it. There's an interesting verse too in the Old Testament in Ecclesiastes. You probably heard this phrase: "There's a time for everything, a time to be born, a time to die". The Byrds kind of made that song, this verse famous with "Turn, turn, turn," right? But one of the "time for everythings" later on the list, you can go read the whole list yourself in Ecclesiastes chapter 3, is there's a time "to scatter stones and a time to gather them".
Now what in the world does that mean? Well, that made a lot of sense in the Old Testament culture because stones did one of two things. Watch this now. They were what you would grab to inflict punishment on somebody you didn't like. Or you took them and built them into a pile to turn them into an altar. And the Bible says there's a time to scatter them. No one's picking up like, I'm so mad at you, I'm about to throw this at you and knock you upside the head, come on, somebody. But the Bible says, the Bible's offering this thought, "Yeah, there are those that scatter them, but there's also a time to gather them". And for some of you, it's time for you to gather the stones instead of throwing the stones.
So I'll show you a story, there's only one that I can find in the whole Bible where this actually happened. It's a story in the book of Genesis where Jacob and his father-in-law Laban were basically in a 20-year battle. Go read the whole story. It's got tons of drama in it. If you wanna read some fun drama between this father-in-law and this son-in-law and the conflict they were having with their families and their possessions. It was a mess. And finally, they decided, we gotta fix this because we're basically destroying the whole family. And it says in Genesis 31, you can go read the rest of the story in Genesis 31, "'Come now, let's get it right. Let's make a covenant, you and I, and let it serve as a witness between us.' So Jacob took a stone," the one he wanted to throw at his father-in-law, "and set it up as a pillar. And he said to his relatives, 'Gather stones.'"
So you also grab the ones where you've been offended. Man, you lied to me. You hurt me. Daddy, you were addicted and it messed me up. I was in my teenage years and I needed something steady and stable. "And they grabbed the stones and piled them into a heap, turned it into an altar and ate there by the heap". And I'm just offering to you that if you'll allow God to work in your heart, I'm not asking you to like it, I'm just asking you to do it. That you'll trust God, that I'm not gonna take my offense in all the relational issues that have happened to me. I'm gonna turn it into an altar and I'm gonna seek God, I'm gonna trust God for a miracle. Can I hear a good "Amen," somebody in this room?
That's right. And I know that's painful to talk about, but it really unlocks something in the heavenlies. Here's the second thing I'm gonna offer to you, and that is to ask God. Now we're gonna get God involved in healing our relationships. You say, "Chris, if I want God involved after I've gotten my heart right, or I'm in the process of getting my heart right, how do I get God involved"? And I wanna give you three things. For you note-takers, jot this down. The first is, I want you to pray for them. Notice, I didn't say pray for the situation. I'm saying pray for them. And some of y'all thinking, "I do. I pray the flies of a thousand camels finds their armpit, right? Hemorrhoids in Jesus's name. Like, I know", okay.
I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about literally praying for them. Lord, I pray for them today. I'm asking you to touch them and bless them. Do a work in their life. That's hard to do with somebody who's really hurt you, but Jesus taught us this: "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' No". And by the way, this is the mantra of the world, and the church of the living God needs to change that mantra. He says, "But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you".
Now I've witnessed that by the way. I don't do counseling anymore for obvious reasons. You know, I'm leading this organization, this church, and the college and all these types of things, but in the early years of the church and when I was an associate pastor in Louisiana, I did my fair share of counseling, but I found me a little trick, you know, like a little something that worked a lot, because I actually didn't like doing counseling much. I wanted, I always saw the solution in the first 2 minutes, but they want to talk about it for an hour. Come on, somebody, all right? Okay, anyway. Made me a bad counselor, but anyway. But I learned to do something when people came in. I'd say, "Y'all, let's... before we get started, let's pray". And they were ready. They basically were in there ready to agree with them on how bad that other person was. That's what they wanted from me.
And so I said, "Well, let's just pray". And they go, "Oh yeah, of course, we need to pray. It's the church". And I said, "You know what? Better yet, I want y'all to pray". Now their eyes lit up like, "Oh my goodness, I'm gonna pray"? I said, "And you know what? Not just pray. I want you, sir, to pray for her. Ma'am, I want you to pray for him". And they was like, at first it was like, "God, kill him". No, they were ready, you know? But the more they prayed, I saw their heart. It was the most amazing thing, how their hearts softened. I said, "I want you to pray for him. I want you to bless him when you pray for him. I want you to pray what God's best for his life. Sir, pray God's best for her".
And I watched, and by the time they end up praying, they were hugging and kissing like, "All right, see y'all next time, everybody, right? Let's move on". Because there's something powerful when we just pray. I have some people that have disappointed me. I have some relational things that have been painful for me as well. And I just, every day I just pray for them, "Lord, I forgive them, I give them to you. I'm asking absolute best for them in Jesus's name". But then Jesus ramps it up another level. I'm just asking you if you really want a miracle, I'm not, I mean, he's just not going, just, "Okay, here you go". No, no, he's going to work in your heart and then we're going to pray for them and Jesus ramps it up and bless them.
Now the word "bless" means to speak well of. Now how in the world am I gonna do that with somebody who's created so much pain in my life? But watch how the miraculous happens in relationships when you do. I'm just telling you. I'll show you where Jesus asks you to do that. "But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you". Romans says it this way: "Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse". And if you'll make up your mind that even though they deserve every bit of it, that I'm not gonna speak something unwholesome over their life, I'm gonna speak a blessing over them in Jesus's name, I'm just telling you because I've witnessed it. God will do a work inside of them.
I watched it in my own father-in-law. If you've been around here, you know this story. My father-in-law, Billy, who's now with the Lord, Tammy's dad, when he was in eighth grade, he had a math teacher who basically cursed him. He called Billy to come do a problem on the chalkboard and Billy steps out of his little chair, walks up to the board, and he was a genius, especially in math, genius. And he walked up to the chalk board and just wrote the answer and then walked back. And the teacher said, "Hornsby, that's wrong". And Billy said, "No, it's not, it's right". And the teacher said, "Yeah, the answer's right, but you didn't show your work". Didn't you hate that, everybody, when they made you do that? "You didn't show your work". You were supposed to show how you got to that, so it's wrong. And Billy says, "It doesn't matter, I got it right".
Now Billy shouldn't have been that sassy to his teacher, okay, but it made the teacher mad. And the teacher said, "Hornsby, you'll never account to anything. You'll be a loser your whole life". And for some reason, man, that thing just, that curse hit his life. And for the next 6 years of his life, he lived like a loser. At 15 years old, he was playing country music in bars, sneaking out of the house every night. Just, you know, just living really, I mean, just a horrible life. And a few years later when he was trying to get, you know, he had Tammy and Tammy's sisters were born, he was trying to find a job, he didn't have a great education.
And in Louisiana you go to Exxon, you know, the chemical plants to try to find a job and he goes to the chemical plant and fills out this application, turns it in and the examiner said, "Hey, we'll call you when we score the test". He goes, "Don't bother, I probably didn't do well," because he was living the life of a loser. And so he gets home and just a few hours later they said, "Mr. Hornsby, come back in, we wanna talk to you". He said, "Just tell me I failed it. Don't make me come in". And he drove into Exxon and they said, "Sir, we have never had someone score this high on this test before. There's a champion on the side of you. If you'll put your mind to it, you'll really amount to something someday". And that was the day he talks about how the curse was reversed because something was spoken over his life. Are y'all listening to me, church?
That's the power of your mouth and the power of a blessing. We pray for them, we bless them, and then Jesus even ramps it up one more level. Do good to them. Do good means actually do something that's beneficial for them that they actually need. In Romans chapter 12 it says: "Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. And if it's as possible as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Don't take revenge". God says, "I'll take care of that. Don't you get it? I'm the righteous judge". "On the contrary, 'If your enemy is hungry, feed 'em.'" Write 'em a check. "'And if they're thirsty, give them something to drink and in doing this, you will heap burning coals on their head.'" Which y'all thinking, "Let them burn, baby, burn".
No, that's not what that means. Burning coals was one of the greatest commodities in a day where you had to have fire to cook your food. And many times people's fire would go out and the neighbor would oftentimes grab their burning coals and bring it to their neighbor in the evening so they could have a way to cook their food. It was a way of doing good to them. Are y'all listening to me, everybody? "Do not overcome evil by evil, but overcome evil with," say it out loud, "evil with good". I'm trying to teach you the keys to a miracle. And honestly, your church has modeled this. There's been times where people got upset with us for, we believe, not the right reasons, and we just decided, even in our own city, we will never speak evil against any school system or our city government.
We're gonna bless them and we just even when they told us to stop we kept blessing them and God, by the way, everything that has ever happened in those areas has been completely restored in every way and to God be the glory. A healing of a relationship that actually matters to us. Are y'all listening to me, church? Trying to help you get a miracle from God. And it happens when you allow God to work in your life. And then when you get God involved by praying, blessing, and doing good, here's the last one. And that is you need to apply God's plan for healing and restoration.
So I want to close with this thought that God has a plan for healing and restoration and it's a process. So it's usually not an event. We're gonna pray at the end of the service that God heals your relationships. And for some of you it might happen in this second but for others it's gonna happen when you lead a Small Group or attend a group. Notice that most all these stories, they did the process what we call here, "You know God". What I'm trying to say is if you want a miracle get close to Jesus first.
If you want a miracle get in a Small Group and find freedom and just watch God do a work inside of you that turns into a work inside of others. And we're getting ready to launch new groups in about 3 weeks. And by the way, if you wanna lead one and you wanna just be aggressive in your walk toward God, I don't know if I can offer you anything that will grow your faith more than whenever you're just leading a group and you can be trained. We're training today at 11.30. Every Sunday this month at 11.30, you can receive Small Group leader training. It happens when you discover your purpose. Like, I have this trying to keep me in Haran, but I've decided I still have Canaan in my future and I'm not gonna get stuck here, I'm gonna discover my purpose and I'm gonna make a difference.
Every story that I've read to you, this is what people did and I'll close with this one. So in 2010, there was a couple named Chris and Kay who decided to get a divorce. They had a 2-year-old daughter named Kay Kay. And their marriage was a mess. And they said by their own testimony, and I know these people very well. They said by their own testimony, they were going to church, but they really weren't into it. They just weren't... they kind of checked that box, and they divorced after many, many years with this 2-year... In 2015, somebody invited them to the Auburn campus. Shout out to the Auburn campus. And they showed up and these friends were invited.
Now remember, they're divorced, but it's funny how God works. They had separate friends, inviting them to come to the Auburn campus. Those same friends invited them to a Small Group and guess what? It was the same group. So they're 5 years divorced and now they're in a Small Group and it was a marriage Small Group and they're the only ones in the group not married. Are y'all listening to me, everybody? And they're looking across the room and there he is and he's looking across the room and there she is. And they decided what do we have to lose?
Let's go through this process. Let's just see what the Lord does. And they went through all this curriculum, and again, they're still divorced. Well, in the next year, Kay is going through 21 Days of Prayer, and God worked in her heart. She goes, "It's my move to make. I'm gonna get this thing right". She made her life right with God first, and then she talked to her husband, says, "Let's work on this thing". In the summer of 2015, Chris and Kay got remarried, and today Kay Hargrave is the Vice President of Advancement at Highlands College and has raised tens of millions of dollars. She was raising money, by the way, for Auburn University, for athletics. Now she's doing something that's really more important. Come on, everybody, right? Give God the praise for that. God did a healing. God did a work. But they participated in the process.
And so Father, in this moment, I'm praying for people who need to have the courage to first of all let you be the Lord of their life. Maybe they're like Lauren and they know it's the right thing, but they've been stuck and haven't known how to do it. And so, Lord, I'm praying and I'm asking you right now for every person who makes that step of faith to do it.
Now, if that's you, do it right now. You can do it in a simple prayer and I'm gonna lead you. Just pray this prayer. Say:
Jesus, please forgive me for living my life without you. For living my life my way. And today, I surrender my life completely to you.
Just say that to him. Just whisper it right there in your chair. Say this, say:
Lord, I ask you to be the Lord of my life, the King of my heart, heal me, change me. I surrender all to you today because you're the Son of God who rose from the dead, and today I put my faith in you. Thank you for saving me. Thank you for a fresh start. In your name I pray, amen.